[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 145 (Thursday, September 4, 2025)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E811-E812]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HIGHLIGHTING ADVANCES IN CHINESE ELECTRIC VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY AND THE
NEED FOR AMERICAN INVESTMENT IN BATTERY TECHNOLOGY
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HON. MARCY KAPTUR
of ohio
in the house of representatives
Thursday, September 4, 2025
Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to highlight a discussion of the
advances in Chinese electric vehicle technology and the importance of
American investment in battery technology. While the Republicans scale
back their ambitions for American leadership in energy technology,
Communist China is racing into the future. We all know that they stole
American technology to get where they are, but now they're lapping us--
especially in batteries where they control 85 percent of the global
market.
Further, the Chinese automaker, BYD, is making electric vehicles that
cost as little as $8,000, and they are gobbling up the global market
share.
Even more troubling, BYD and another Chinese firms have announced
that they will soon be selling EVs that can recharge in 5 minutes to
travel as much as 320 miles--equivalent to a typical traditional gas-
powered car. Another Chinese battery firm has announced the development
of a battery they claim will be able to go 3,000 kilometers on only a
5-minute charge.
Now, not everyone loves electric vehicles--my car has a traditional
internal combustion engine--but think of the national security
implications of falling behind in batteries and advanced manufacturing.
We see in Ukraine that the future battlefield is electrified.
We need to be pressing forward, not just in electric vehicles and
batteries, but on all fronts. We should be investing in new forms of
transportation, more in biofuels, and more in sustainable aviation
fuels. We cannot retreat from the future of energy and transportation,
and certainly not from our history of leading the world at the
forefront of new technologies.
I would like to include in the Record a Wall Street Journal article
from April, ``Five-Minute EV Charging Is Here, but Not for U.S.-Made
Cars''. I would also point my colleagues to the following articles on
this topic: Electryk's ``BYD's low-cost Seagull EV now starts at under
$8,000 in China,'' and ``Breakthrough EV Battery Patent Could Charge in
Minutes and Cross a Continent,'' by Carscoops.
Five-Minute EV Charging Is Here, but Not for U.S.-Made Cars
Catl's and BYD's rapid-charging technologies underscore china's
dominance in the EV sector, a technological priority for Xi Jinping
(By Yoko Kubota, April 23, 2025)
Shanghai.--Two of the world's leading battery developers
are locked in a technological race that has brought the
charging time for an electric vehicle to just five minutes--
about the amount of time it takes to refuel a traditional
gasoline-powered car.
And, in a twist with geopolitical ramifications, both of
the technological leaders are Chinese. It is a show of
prowess that underscores just how far China has extended its
global dominance over next-generation technologies, in some
cases leaving the U.S. years behind.
The claimed leap forward on EV batteries is merely the
latest technological feat for a country that has stunned
Western governments with a string of breakthroughs on
artificial intelligence, semiconductors and EVs--a
vindication of leader Xi Jinping's ambitions of turning China
into a global technological powerhouse.
Contemporary Amperex Technology, the world's biggest
automotive battery maker, said this week on the sidelines of
Auto Shanghai, China's biggest auto show, that it has
developed a new fast-charging system that, within five
minutes, can power a car for 320 miles of driving. By getting
the charging time down to roughly the same time as it takes
to refuel a gasoline-powered car, the Ningde, China-based
company, known as CATL, appears to have further eroded a
major obstacle to wider EV adoption.
CATL's announcement came just after that of fellow Chinese
battery maker BYD which also manufactures its own EVs that
rival Tesla's products. In March, BYD, based in the southern
Chinese technology hub of Shenzhen, said that its new
charging technology is capable of providing 250 miles of
range in five minutes.
The technologies won't be introduced on a wide scale right
away. The batteries can only be charged at a network of
superfast charging stations that is still being built out.
Still, CATL's and BYD's technologies serve as the latest
example of how China is years ahead of the U.S. in EV
technology, even as the Trump administration intensifies
efforts to curtail Chinese companies' access to cutting-edge
technology.
China, under Xi, has long positioned EVs as a technological
priority, while in Washington, concerns have grown among
officials and lawmakers about energy security.
CATL is now responsible for making more than one-third of
the EV batteries on the global market, including those inside
made-in-China Teslas.
CATL and BYD's claimed technological advancements are
unlikely to benefit American consumers, at least in the near
term, given sky-high tariffs levied by the U.S. against
Chinese goods--and in particular EVs manufactured in China.
It is a reminder of how divergent the automotive landscape,
and the consumer experience, have become between China and
the U.S., the world's two biggest economies and auto markets.
Chinese electric cars are an exceedingly rare sight on U.S.
roads because of tariffs that were already at around 100%
last year under import taxes levied by the Biden
administration. Then, in a string of recent moves, President
Trump slapped additional tariffs on most Chinese goods,
including cars, of 145%.
Meanwhile, within China, Xi's top-down push has been
broadly embraced by ordinary consumers, who are now as likely
to buy electric and plug-in vehicles as traditional gas-
powered cars, aided by relatively low electricity costs and a
batch of consumption-related subsidies.
In March, 52% of passenger cars sold in the country were
battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids of range-extended
vehicles, according to the China Passenger Car Association.
As adoption rapidly increased in China, homegrown players
came to dominate the global EV supply chain--including,
crucially, batteries, perhaps the single most important
technology underpinning EV performance. Many of these players
got a big boost working alongside Tesla, the American EV
pioneer that started making cars at its Shanghai plant in
late 2019.
Now, global dependence on Chinese battery suppliers, paired
with concerns that Chinese EVs could flood overseas markets
and pose a threat to domestic players, have raised alarms in
the U.S. and other Western markets.
In a bid to catch up, Ford Motor is building--a battery
plant in the U.S. where it plans to manufacture batteries
using CATL technology.
Chinese battery makers are leading producers of lithium-
iron-phosphate, or LFP batteries. These iron-based battery
cells cost less than the nickel-and-cobalt combination used
widely in North America and Europe.
[[Page E812]]
CATL's newest fast-charging battery, the second generation
of its Shenxing lineup, is an LFP battery with a range of
about 500 miles. CATL said it improved electron transmission
efficiency to avoid overheating during rapid charging.
How quickly such batteries will be adopted on a wide scale
is another matter, because of the need to develop the
charging infrastructure. BYD has said that it is working to
build 4,000 compatible stations in China and that its
charging system will be initially available only for two
models, limiting its uptake in the near term.
Lihong Qin, president of Chinese EV maker NIO, which uses
CATL's battery cells and offers its own battery-swap system,
said carmakers need to see how quickly the rapid-charging
technology scales up, referring to the infrastructure build-
out. ``There is still a big difference between theoretical
calculations and practical applications,'' Qin said.
Mike Dunne, who runs a namesake automotive consulting firm,
said CATL's and BYD's superfast charging technologies are a
genuine breakthrough, but several challenges remain.
The new technology will cost more, and frequent usage will
wear out the battery cells, he said.
``It's more sizzle than steak,'' Dunne said.
China has more than 13 million EV-charging facilities
nationwide, counting both publicly and privately operated
ones, state media has reported. The U.S. has around 77,300
charging locations with about 230,000 EV-charging points in
total, data from the Joint Office of Energy and
Transportation showed. It is unclear if the two figures are
directly comparable, but industry experts widely regard
China's EV-charging environment to be far ahead of the
U.S.'s.
Separately on Monday, CATL introduced a new sodium-ion
battery that it calls Naxtra. At the moment, mainstream EV
batteries are reliant on lithium, creating a potential
bottleneck around supplies of the material. CATL says sodium-
ion batteries, if mass-produced, could help reduce its
dependence on lithium.
Sodium-ion batteries are made from a sodium compound called
soda ash, which can be produced using table salt. Unlike
lithium, sodium is easily accessible everywhere. The U.S. has
also been working on developing this technology.
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